NOVANEWS
Netanyahu needs to face a simple, clear-cut question: Do you want a democratic state based on the 1967 borders, or not?” [item 5] [there is of course another option—a single democratic secular state on all of historic Palestine with equal rights for all its citizens, be they Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or other. Dorothy]
————————
Dear Friends,
The newspapers—international and domestic—were full of the new reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah—some positive, some not. Israel’s leaders say that they find the reconciliation a travesty, but not so by many others. Have not included all the articles on the subject that I have read, as that would have lengthened this well beyond the 10 items currently below.
But before going to the issue of the Palestinian unity pact, a few items on other subjects.
Item 1 is a much fuller report on the Barenboim concert in Gaza than the one that was in Haaretz. Enjoy.
Item 2, “Death and Deliverance,” is very sad, because it hopes for the deliverance from Islamophobia of United States citizens who happen to be Muslims as a result of the killing of Bin Laden. Why, indeed, should there be Islamophobia, and why should an execution or assassination (your pick) be grounds for ending it?
Item 3 is a link to the May 3 compilation in Today in Palestine. The first sections deal with the same topics that follow below. But from the third section on are data about events in Palestine. Other things should not detract from the fact that Palestinians still live under occupation and colonization, horrible things.
Items 4 through 10 are all about the present situation by people who see the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah as hopeful, judging it to be a positive move. These are all commentaries, each in its own way is worth reading.
All the best,
Dorothy
===================================
1. I missed this in the Guardian yesterday, even though I was keeping my eyes out for a report on the concert. Am grateful that Abraham saw it. Dorothy]
Forwarded by the JPLO List
Daniel Barenboim brings ‘solace and pleasure’ to Gaza
with Mozart concert
Israeli conductor voices support for non-violence and Palestinian state
during performance for schoolchildren and NGO workers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/03/daniel-barenboim-orchestra-g\aza-concert
* Conal Urquhart http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/conalurquhart
* guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/ , Tuesday 3 May 2011
20.06 BST
*
The orchestra arrived with the impact of a presidential motorcade, in
armoured cars, with sirens wailing and flanked by dozens of armed men.
It was an unusual overture to a rendition of Mozart. But then, the
arrival in Gaza <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza> of Daniel
Barenboim, the world-famous Israeli conductor and his Orchestra for Gaza
– featuring musicians from Paris, Milan, Berlin and Vienna – to play
for an audience of schoolchildren and NGO workers was itself far from
usual.
The orchestra set off from Berlin on Monday, stopped at Vienna and then
landed at El Arish, close to the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip, on a
plane chartered by Barenboim himself.
As an Israeli citizen it is illegal for Barenboim to enter Gaza without
a permit, and, as if that wasn’t enough, the recent murder of an Italian
peace activist and fears that pro-Osama bin Laden groups in Gaza might
seek revenge on western targets meant that the UN security team was on
high alert.
Barenboim has previously played in Ramallah and holds an honorary
Palestinian passport, and is widely praised for his attempts to reach
out across the divide. In Israel
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israel> , meanwhile, he has been
attacked for promoting the work of Wagner.
He told his audience on Tuesday that the people of Gaza “have been
blockaded for many years and this blockade has affected all of your
lives.”
The aim of his orchestra, he said, was to bring “solace and pleasure”
through music to the people of Gaza and to let them know that people all
over the world care for them.
Gaza is more accustomed to the sound of explosions, sonic booms and the
traditional drums and pipes that accompany its nightly weddings than
Mozart. Many religious leaders disapprove of music, and people in
general prefer Middle Eastern-style music to Western classical or
popular music.
Barenboim drew a burst of applause and then a murmur of appreciation as
the orchestra began when he told the audience that they might recognise
the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No 40 as it was the basis of one
of the celebrated songs of Fairuz, the most famous living singer in the
Arab world.
The orchestra first played Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which was
warmly appreciated, but Barenboim’s speech at the end of the performance
went down even better.
“I am a Palestinian ..… and an Israeli,” he told the audience, who
applauded the second statement only slightly less than the first. “So
you see it is possible to be both.”
He said the Israeli and Palestinian conflict was one between two peoples
who believe they are entitled to live on a single piece of land rather
than a conflict between two nations about borders, adding that the whole
world understood that a Palestinian state should be established on the
land that Israel occupied in 1967.
“Everyone has to understand that the Palestinian cause is a just cause
therefore it can be only given justice if it is achieved without
violence. Violence can only weaken the righteousness of the Palestinian
cause,” he said.
Referring to the revolutions in the Arab world and the nuclear
catastrophe in Japan, he said that everyone should question their past
actions. “Every musician here has played these pieces many times,
sometimes hundreds of times. Yesterday we looked at this music as if we
had seen it for the first time. We never accept that the next note will
played the same way it was played before. Thinking anew is our daily
activity. I hope all the people of this region can take note of that,”
he said.
Diana Rustum, 12, a pupil at a local UN school said she enjoyed the
discipline of the musicians and the melody of the music. “I think it was
different from Fairuz but just as beautiful,” she said.
Abdul Rahman Abu Hashem, 12, insisted that he did not get bored during
the hour-long performance. “It was very good,” he said.
===================================
2.
From the IWPS site
Member, axis of good Wednesday, May 04, 2011 | 01 Jumada al-Thani 1432
COMMENT Demise of bin Laden
Death and deliverance
As a Muslim American, I cannot help but hope that the closure afforded by the death of an evil man, can afford some much needed deliverance to a community unfairly scrutinized and unduly targeted
http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/death_and_deliverance/
By Rafia Zakaria, May 3, 2011
Muslim with flag (@naqeeb) leads GZ chants
Indianapolis, IN
Within hours of the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death, news crews appeared outside mosques. In the still frigid dawn in Des Moines and the already balmy humidity of New Orleans, Muslim Americans emerging from fajr prayers were asked their reaction to news of Bin Laden’s death. Their response was that of any other American; a killer had been punished and an elusive closure delivered to a terrible tragedy. These moments in the aftermath a jubilant morning, represent in a nutshell the tremendous burden Muslim Americans have borne on their weary shoulders since the attacks of September 11, 2001. They never have and never did support terror, but in the decade hence, they have had to become adept at denouncing it, paying again and again the price for an imagined complicity, forced again and again to prove their loyalty.
The death of Osama Bin Laden thus brings not only closure to the victims of the terrible tragedy, the thousands (including Muslims) who perished that day, but also the possibility of reprieve for an American Muslim community plagued by hate crimes and public suspicion. In recent months, the escalation of political rhetoric against Muslims, the concerted effort to construct an entire community as a sinister bogeyman, demonize their everyday religious practice as inherently evil have provoked exercises in victimization largely unknown a decade ago. Women wearing hijab have been chucked off planes and men speaking Arabic reported to the FBI just for the act of speaking loudly on cell phones. Anti-Sharia bills have cleared legislatures in Oklahoma and Tennessee, all touted as integral steps toward “Keeping America Safe”, and similar bills are poised for introduction in Alaska and California.
In the midst of this era of seemingly unending suspicion, the death of Osama Bin Laden could augur the beginning of a new era for Islam in America. With the mastermind dead, the image of the tragedy can now perhaps be extricated from the beliefs and practices of a community that was held unfairly complicit in every act of terror hence. American Muslim leaders have in the past decade issued statement after statement, denunciation after denunciation in the hope of finally convincing their fellow Americans of their aversion to terrorism, and their helplessness before them. Until today it seems, none of these have been enough; sometimes lost and at others ignored before the propaganda of the religious right intent on painting them as traitors and their faith as inherently violent.
In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s death, Americans both Muslim and otherwise are wont to realize that the death of a leader, while symbolic, is not the death of an ideology. When celebrations have waned, somber reflections will likely impress the reality of a world that is unlikely to abandon terror as a tactic or stop the misuse of Islamic doctrine as a means for political power. As a Muslim American, I cannot help but hope that the closure afforded by the death of an evil man, can afford some much needed deliverance to a community unfairly scrutinized and unduly targeted. The end of Osama will not mean the end of terrorism, but it can mean the end of undue suspicion and unwanted prejudice.
Rafia Zakaria is Associate Editor of altmuslim.com and an attorney who teaches constitutional history and political philosophy. The photo accompanying this article is that of Twitter user @naqeeb leading chants at Ground Zero on Sunday night. His shirt says, “I’m Muslim – don’t panic!”
==============================
3. Link to the latest ‘Today in Palestine’
http://www.theheadlines.org/11/03-05-11.shtml
=========================
4. The Guardian Wednesday 4 May 2011 20.05 BST
Palestinian joy as rivals Fatah and Hamas sign reconciliation pact
Mahmoud Abbas says deal turns ‘black page of division’ after signing deal with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Egypt
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/04/palestine-joy-fatah-hamas-reconciliation-pact
Ian Black and Conal Urquhart in Gaza City
Palestinians celebrate the reconciliation agreement between rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas Photograph: Mohammed Saber/EPA
Rival Palestinian groups have hailed the signing of a reconciliation agreement that could change the parameters of the search for Middle East peace, amid trenchant opposition from Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the head of Fatah, and Khaled Meshaal, the leader of the Islamist movement Hamas, met for the first time in five years at a ceremony in Cairo on Wednesday, where Egypt’s transitional government pulled off a striking coup by brokering the deal.
Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s successor as leader of the PLO, said they had turned forever the “black page of divisions”. Meshaal, also seeking to strike a historically resonant note, declared that Hamas’s bitter rift with Fatah was “behind us”.
The potential of the agreement was underlined by the presence of representatives from the UN, the EU and the Arab League – all now digesting the diplomatic implications for the region. “We are certain of success so long as we are united,” Abbas said. “Reconciliation clears the way not only to putting the Palestinian house in order but also to a just peace.”
The deal will make it easier for the Palestinians to go to the UN in September and demand broad international recognition of an independent state – without a negotiated peace agreement with Israel.
It provides for the creation of a joint caretaker government before Palestinian-wide elections next year. It does not require Hamas to recognise Israel. But sensitivities and difficulties ahead were underlined by an argument over protocol –whether Meshaal should sit on the podium with Abbas or among other delegates in the hall.
The agreement was hailed in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and refugee camps in Lebanon. But the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, savaged the accord as “a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.
Israel, which signed the 1993 Oslo agreement with the PLO, shuns Hamas, viewing it as a terrorist group committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
The former Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, did not help the movement’s image when he praised Osama Bin Laden as an “Arab holy warrior”.
“How can we make peace with a government when half of it calls for the destruction of Israel and glorifies the murderous Osama bin Laden?” Netanyahu said during a visit to London. Netanyahu has been lobbying for the EU and the US to cut aid to the PA if Hamas joins a new government.
Meshaal, once the target of an assassination attempt by the Mossad, and now based in Damascus, Syria, spelled out Hamas’s goal: “Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return [of Palestinian refugees].”
The reconciliation brought recognisable signs of change to the streets of Gaza City hours before the signing of the pact.
Palestine TV, the channel associated with Fatah and its de facto capital, Ramallah, was allowed to broadcast live from Gaza for the first time in four years.
The event they televised, a demonstration in favour of the reconciliation agreement, began with a few dozen people chanting in the Square of the Unknown Soldier, and developed into a raucous party of thousands waving the yellow flags of Fatah which had been long hidden.
Last week, when news of the agreement became public, activists headed to the same square to demonstrate their pleasure at the prospect of an end to division. Within minutes, they were cleared by Hamas policemen wielding batons.
On Wednesday, the same policeman made no attempt to clear the crowds even when the green flags of Hamas supporters were lost in a sea of yellow Fatah flags.
Rashid Mawad, a student, was waving a Fatah flag with one hand, his other still in a plaster cast following his beating at last week’s demonstration, his face still bruised. “I wasn’t optimistic last week but I feel different now,” he said.
“I don’t know why, perhaps it’s because of the events in Syria,” he said.
Mowayad Aish, an engineering student, was waving a Hamas flag a few metres away. “This is the first step towards ending the occupation of Palestine. It is true there have been difficulties in the past and there will be obstacles in the future but we must remember it is for the people that we want to end the division.”
====================
5. Haaretz Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Latest update 01:06 04.05.11
Israel must choose between peace and a racist state
Netanyahu needs to face a simple, clear-cut question: Do you want a democratic state based on the 1967 borders, or not?
By Sefi Rachlevsky
The slogan that brought Benjamin Netanyahu to power was “making a secure peace.” That is no accident. “Peace” has maintained the right-wing government to a much greater extent than the right-wing government has maintained peace.
The reason for this is simple. When “peace” is at issue, the domestic debate is diverted to the image of the “other,” the one with whom peace should or should not be made. From there, the road is short in Israel to governmental scorn for the weakness of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and for assertions, like those of Netanyahu, that Hamas is a continuation of the Nazis.
But the cyclical Israeli calendar, which moves from “Holocaust” to “Independence,” reminds us of what ought to have been self-evident. There is one question that must precede the question of “peace” – a question that constitutes the essence of independence and formed the basis of the Zionist revolution: What does Israel want?
Not for nothing is that question ignored by the government. For when you ask what Israel wants, the requisite answer is clear: a state based on the borders in which it achieved independence, known today as the 1967 borders; a democratic state in which all are equal, as described in the Declaration of Independence.
This answer is dangerous to the right, because most Israelis still support it and it is also accepted internationally. Moreover, it has potency in any situation, even when all eyes are made to look outward, on relations between Fatah and Hamas. If Defense Minister Ehud Barak is right that Hamas capitulated to Fatah, the way is open for a successful implementation of a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines. And if the opposite is true, an Israel that has chosen a democratic state in the 1967 borders has a wealth of available options that would enable it to look out for itself with widespread international support.
But the question of what Israel wants has a second possible answer: Israel wants a racist messianic state, one in which Jews are citizens and non-Jews are subjects. This second answer is not fantastic. In essence, this has been the Israeli reality for 44 years already. In the territories, and also in Jerusalem, Jews are citizens and non-Jews aren’t. Just this week, the science minister (! ) presented an award to Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu at a ceremony in which the latter advocated cleansing Safed of Arabs.
Barak, an adherent of the method of verbal misdirection used to enable special-forces operations, dragged “the Third Way” out of storage to be the platform of his Atzmaut party. But Barak knows better than anyone that there is no third way. In special operations, in business and in policy alike, the decision is simple and clear: yes or no. Either Israel wants a state based on the promises of its Declaration of Independence, or it doesn’t.
To flee this simple truth, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (Likud ) invented what his staffers termed the “teaspoon” policy at the 1991 Madrid Conference: endless negotiating sessions at which mountains of sugar would be stirred into oceans of tea and coffee, but no agreement would ever be reached. Netanyahu has perfected this method, which enables him to keep stirring sugar into the negotiators’ cups forever instead of answering the question of what Israel wants.
But the time for teaspoons has ended. September 2011 is imminent. U.S. President Barack Obama, who came to power on the wings of domestic opposition to racism, has now just scored a victory over racism and messianism abroad. Regardless of whether or not he is personally a fan of Zionism, America’s interests and international developments have granted him the ability to help distance Israel from racism and restore its independence.
To do this, it is necessary to end the witch’s brew of peace, teaspoons and ambiguity, and bring Netanyahu face to face, both at home and abroad, with this simple, clear-cut question: Do you want a democratic state based on the 1967 borders, or not? There is no other question. But the requisite answer is not a facile breath of air. It requires dismantling the settlements outside Israel’s borders, bursting the racist-messianic bubble that is taking over Israel’s educational and legal systems, and putting rabbis like Eliyahu on trial instead of granting them awards.
Now is the time to answer that one question, the one that founded Israel 63 years ago: What does Israel want?
======================
6. Haaretz Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Latest update 17:24 04.05.11
Hamas and Fatah plan to begin implementing unity pact next week
Leaders of Islamist movement to meet Abbas to kick-start procedures for reconciliation, after signing deal in Cairo to mend four-year rift.
By Reuters
Tags: Israel news Hamas Fatah
Leaders of the Islamist Hamas group will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next week to start work on implementing their Egyptian-brokered reconciliation deal, a senior Hamas official said on Wednesday.
“We will have a meeting with President Abu Mazen [Abbas] next week, possibly in Cairo to kick-start the procedures for the reconciliation,” Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said in Cairo after the main Palestinian factions ceremonially endorsed the deal, envisaging a unity government and elections.
Abbas opened the ceremony by declaring that the Palestinians were turning a “black page” on the division between Hamas and Fatah, which began after the Islamist movement overthrew the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip in a bloody 2007 coup.
“We announce the good news from Egypt which has always carried its national and historical responsibility toward the Palestinian people. Four black years have affected the interests of Palestinians. Now we meet to assert a unified will,” he said.
Abbas downplayed Israeli opposition to the reconciliation as an excuse to “evade a peace deal”.
Referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated warning that Abbas must choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas, the Palestinian leader declared: “Israel must choose between peace and settlements.”
In what appeared as a sign of lingering friction, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal did not share the podium with Abbas and the ceremony was delayed briefly over where he would sit. Against expectations, neither signed the unity document.
Abbas had insisted on being the sole speaker at the event and apparently wanted to sit at the podium in order to emphasize his status as president, a move viewed as a squabble over who would control Palestinian foreign policy. Fatah’s policy includes negotiating toward a peace agreement with Israel, something which Hamas opposes.
In his speech to the gathering, Meshaal said Hamas sought a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza devoid of any Israeli settlers and without “giving up a single inch of land” or the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but has kept up settlement activity in the much larger West Bank.
Hamas has stated in the past that it would accept as an interim solution in the form of a state in all of the territory Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, along with a long-term ceasefire.
The unity deal calls for forming an interim government to run the West Bank, where Abbas is based, and the Gaza Strip, and prepare for long-overdue parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.
In his speech, Abbas repeated his call for a halt to Israeli settlement construction as a condition for resuming peace talks with Israel that began in September but fizzled within weeks after it refused to extend a limited building moratorium.
“The state of Palestine must be born this year,” he said.
Abbas is widely expected, in the absence of peace talks, to ask the UN General Assembly in September to recognize a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel and the United States oppose such a unilateral move.
Palestinians view reconciliation as an essential step toward presenting a common front at the United Nations and a reflection of a deep-seated public desire to end the internal schism amid popular revolts that have swept the Arab world.
But the deal presents potential diplomatic problems for Abbas aid-dependent Palestinian Authority. Much of the West shuns Hamas over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.
The United States has reacted coolly to the reconciliation accord. A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said the United States would look at the formation of any new Palestinian government before taking steps on future aid.
The Cairo ceremony was greeted with celebrations in the Palestinian territories. But the public displays were less enthusiastic in the West Bank, where Abbas’s Fatah movement holds sway, and some doubted the deal was genuine.
“We have decided to pay any price so that reconciliation is achieved,” said Meshaal. “Our real fight is with the Israeli occupier, not Palestinian factions and sons of the one nation.”
Meshaal later went to meet Abbas where he was staying in Cairo to discuss the deal, Palestinian sources said.
A spokesman for Abbas, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said the deal was signed on behalf of Fatah by Azzam al-Ahmad and for Hamas by Marzouk. It was not immediately clear why Meshaal and Abbas did not put their own signatures to the deal.
“What we heard was that Abbas said he was the president of the Palestinian people of Fatah and of Hamas and not a leader of one faction only,” said the Palestinian source on the signing.
Egypt has set up a committee to oversee implementation of the accord.
===========================
7 Washington Post Tuesday, May , 8:39 PM
Support the Palestinian unity government
By Jimmy Carter,
This is a decisive moment. Under the auspices of the Egyptian government, Palestine’s two major political movements — Fatah and Hamas — are signing a reconciliation agreement on Wednesday that will permit both to contest elections for the presidency and legislature within a year. If the United States and the international community support this effort, they can help Palestinian democracy and establish the basis for a unified Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that can make a secure peace with Israel. If they remain aloof or undermine the agreement, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory may deteriorate with a new round of violence against Israel. Support for the interim government is critical, and the United States needs to take the lead.
This accord should be viewed as a Palestinian contribution to the “Arab awakening,” as well as a deep wish to heal internal divisions. Both sides understand that their goal of an independent Palestinian state cannot be achieved if they remain divided. The agreement also signals the growing importance of an emerging Egyptian democracy. Acting as an honest broker, the interim Egyptian government coaxed both sides to agreement by merging the October 2009 Cairo Accord that Fatah signed with additions that respond to Hamas’s reservations.
The accord commits both sides to consensus appointments of an election commission and electoral court. I have observed three elections in the Palestinian territory, and these institutions have already administered elections that all international observers found to be free, fair, honest and free of violence.
The two parties also pledge to appoint a unity government of technocrats — i.e., neither Fatah nor Hamas. Security will be overseen by a committee set up by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and Egypt will assist.
Why should the United States and the international community support the agreement? First, it respects Palestinian rights and democracy. In 2006, Hamas won the legislative election, but the “Quartet” — the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — rejected it and withheld aid, and the unity government collapsed. Competition between the two factions turned vicious, and each side has arrested the other’s activists. Instead of exacerbating differences between the two parties, the international community should help them resolve disagreements through electoral and legislative processes.
Second, with international support, the accord could lead to a durable cease-fire. Israel and the United States are concerned that Hamas could use a unity government to launch attacks against Israel. I have visited the Israeli border town of Sderot and share their concern. I urged Hamas’s leaders to stop launching rockets, and they attempted to negotiate a lasting mutual cease-fire. The United States and other Quartet members should assist Hamas and Israel’s search for a cease-fire.
Third, the accord could be a vehicle to press for a final peace agreement for two states. Abu Mazen will be able to negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians. And with Quartet support, a unity government can negotiate with Israel an exchange of prisoners for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and a settlement freeze. In my talks with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, he said Hamas would accept a two-state agreement that is approved in a Palestinian referendum. Such an agreement could provide mutual recognition — Israel would recognize an independent Palestinian state and Palestine would recognize Israel. In other words, an agreement will include Hamas’s recognition of Israel.
Suspicions of Hamas stem from its charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction. I find the charter repugnant. Yet it is worth remembering that Israel negotiated the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization while its charter had similar provisions. It took five more years before the PLO Charter was altered.
Many Israelis say that as long as the Palestinians are divided, there is no partner for peace. But at the same time, they refuse to accept a unity government. In Cairo this week, the Palestinians are choosing unity. It is a fragile unity, but the Quartet should work with them to make it secure and peaceful enough to jump-start final-status negotiations with Israel.
The writer was the 39th president of the United States. He founded the not-for-profit Carter Center, which seeks to advance peace and health worldwide.
© 2011 The Washington Post Company
===========================
8. The Guardian Monday 2 May 2011
Our freedom is now closer
The popular revolutions across the Arab world have given Palestinians a new sense of hope
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/02/palestinian-freedom-arab-unrest-egypt
Azzam Tamimi
When, at the start of this year, Palestinians around the world marked the anniversary of the 2008-09 Israeli war on Gaza, few could see any hope. The Gaza Strip was still under siege, Palestinian reconciliation seemed out of reach, the Arabs were useless and the US unable, or unwilling, to broker a resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine National Authority (PNA).
Then came the Arab popular revolutions, and the mood among Palestinians switched from desperation to euphoria. Soon after the fall of Hosni Mubarak I visited my old friend, the Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al, in Damascus. He told me he was sure the change in Egypt, which he expected would be followed by similar changes in other Arab countries, meant that it would not be too long before Palestine was free.
My friends in Gaza would tell me the same thing, and so would my relatives in Hebron and the diaspora. They all believed that the Mubarak regime was an impediment to the Palestinian struggle for freedom; once the Egyptian people were free, a genuine democracy in Egypt would support the Palestinians.
At the very least, in the short term, Palestinians believed that post-Mubarak Egypt would not take part in the siege of Gaza, which would all but collapse if Egypt were to open the Rafah crossing between Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Indeed, last Friday Egyptian foreign minister Nabil al-Arabi told al-Jazeera that, within seven to 10 days, steps will be taken to alleviate the “blockade and suffering of the Palestinian nation”.
Palestinians monitored the Israeli reaction to the collapse of the Mubarak regime. It did not surprise them to see Israel immensely worried. Mubarak was an ally who contributed to Israel’s security in a very hostile Middle East. The neutralisation of Egypt, and the minimisation of its role in the Palestinian cause since President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978, constituted Zionism’s greatest success since Israel was created 30 years earlier. Rather than spearhead the struggle to liberate Palestine, Mubarak’s Egypt led the so-called Arab moderate camp, an alliance of pro-Israel and pro-US Arab states that included Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, the PNA and the United Arab Emirates.
Palestinians began to imagine what would happen if a popular revolution in Jordan were to bring about a similar change; then one in Saudi Arabia; and perhaps Morocco. Israel would have lost its most important allies in the region and the PNA would be isolated, having been fatally wounded by revelations in al-Jazeera and the Guardian about the concessions its negotiating teams offered in secret to the Israelis.
But although the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions did inspire Arabs to demand political reform or regime change, it was not Jordan, Morocco or Saudi Arabia that saw this the most. There were a few demonstrations, but demands were generally for political reform rather than a change of regime. Instead it was Yemen, Libya and Syria that witnessed the more dramatic protests, which soon escalated into armed struggle in Libya and calls for regime change in Yemen and Syria.
When I saw Khalid Mish’al in February, he did not expect a popular uprising in Syria. He believed the regime was less vulnerable because of its support for resistance in Lebanon and Palestine, as well as its anti-imperialist stance. But solidarity with the Palestinian or Lebanese resistance was not enough to protect any autocratic regime. This worried some Palestinians, and they rushed to express support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime; but Hamas remained silent, to the regime’s displeasure.
While the euphoria created by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions has been dampened by the Libyan experience, seen by many in the Arab region as a revolution gone drastically wrong as a result of armament and western intervention, most Palestinians still believe a new era is coming. The more Arab dictatorships that are replaced by genuine democracies, the closer Palestine will be to liberation. Democracies representing the will of the Arab peoples can only be anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian.
One immediate fruit of Mubarak’s removal and the uprising in Syria has been the revival of Palestinian reconciliation efforts. Responding to grassroots pressure, both Hamas and Fatah met in Cairo and decided to work for the formation of a unity government and the resolution of disputes over security and elections. Fatah is anxious that it may lose favour with Egypt, while Hamas is anxious it may soon lose Syria as a safe haven. Unsurprisingly, Israel threatened to take action against the PNA if Fatah went through with the deal with Hamas.
For many years Israel claimed to be the only democracy in the region. And yet Israeli politicians appealed to the US to intervene in Egypt to prevent Mubarak’s fall, and campaigned for him to remain in power. Israel clearly believes it can count on Arab dictators who are more interested in power and personal wealth than in serving their nations, let alone serving the Palestinian cause.
Despite its claims of superiority, Israel appears to suffer from the same symptoms that plague Arab dictators; the failure to learn that they need to change before it is too late. It’s been too late for Mubarak, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Assad, Muammar Gaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh. Israel has oppressed the Palestinians for so long, and has incurred the wrath of the Arab masses whose revolutions are bringing hope to Palestinians.
Whichever way one looks at it, the Arab revolutions are the best news the Palestinians have had for decades.
==========================
9. Wallwritings May 3, 2011 · 9:21 am [forwarded by Sabeel]
Why Palestinian Unity is the Only Option that Works for Palestinians
By James M. Wall
You would not know it from reading/viewing the American media, which parrots whatever Israel’s leaders say, but Bibi Netanyahu is secretly delighted that Fatah and Hamas have reached a unity agreement.
The official line, of course, is that the Israeli prime minister is outraged that the Palestinian Fatah leadership has actually embraced the Hamas leadership. The leaders of the two parties are shown here, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (left) and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Ha’aretz reported from Jerusalem that, upon hearing of the unity agreement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid down his marker: “the Palestinian Authority must choose whether it is interested in peace with Israel or reconciliation with Hamas.”
This is an empty option, one that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) knows is empty.
The London Guardian explains what lies behind Fatah’s willingness to finally work for unity with Hamas:
There are three chief reasons why, after four years of bitter and violent conflict between the rivals, Fatah acceded to all of Hamas’s political conditions to form a national unity government.
The first was the publication of the Palestine papers, the secret record of the last fruitless round of talks with Israel. The extent to which Palestinian negotiators were prepared to bend over backwards to accommodate Israel surprised even hardened cynics.
The Palestinian Authority found itself haemorrhaging what little authority it had left. The second was the loss to the Palestinian president, Abu Mazen, of his closest allies in Hosni Mubarak and his henchman Omar Suleiman. While they were still around, Gaza’s back door was locked. But the third reason had little to do with either of the above:
Abu Mazen’s faith in Barack Obama finally snapped. For a man who dedicated his career to the creation of a Palestinian state through negotiation, the turning point came when the US vetoed a UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlement-building. In doing so, the US vetoed its own policy.
To make the point, the resolution was drafted out of the actual words Hillary Clinton used to condemn construction. Fatah’s frustration with all this has now taken political form.
Long-time Bibi Watcher James Zogby knows why it was time for Fatah to give up on both Bibi and Barack. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, wrote in Huffington Post:
What is, of course, galling, is the assumption implicit in [Netanhyahu’s] framing of the matter, namely, that peace with his government is a real possibility that the Palestinians have now rejected. In reality, the Netanyahu government has shown no interest in moving toward peace — unless on terms they dictate and the Palestinians accept.
While feigning disappointment at this Palestinian move, Netanyahu must privately be delighted. The pressure he was feeling to deliver some “concessions” to the Palestinians in his upcoming speech to the U.S. Congress has now been relieved.
This unity between Fatah and Hamas is inevitable. The problem for the US Congress and Israel is that they cannot face reality. These two soul mates in repression continue to pretend the future belongs to them. They keep making the same mistakes. For example:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to deliver a speech before a joint session of Congress while he is in Washington to address the AIPAC policy conference.
The AIPAC Policy Conference, scheduled for May 22-24, is, according to the AIPAC web page, “the pro-Israel community’s preeminent annual gathering”.
MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow, Media Matters Action Network, writes in Huffington Post:
The Israeli response to news that Palestinian factions had achieved a unity agreement was predictably irritating. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu derided the agreement in stark terms, saying that the Palestinians had a choice of either “Peace with Israel or peace with Hamas”.
The narrative that Israel is pushing is that Fatah’s embrace of Hamas will eliminate any chance for peace. It is a false narrative. Rosenberg explains why the union of Fatah and Hamas is the only option available to the Palestinians.
Rosenberg predicts that the US Congress will fall quickly into the Bibi narrative: Condemn the Palestinians and withhold aid until they stop all this “unity” foolishness.
The problem with this old scenario, which has worked to keep the Palestinians in bondage since 1948, is that things have changed since the outbreak of the Arab Spring. Change in the Middle East is coming, slowly in some areas, more quickly in others. Some change will be violent; other changes will be relatively peaceful.
When Egypt ousted a brutal dictator, Israel lost a “reliable” neighbor to the south, a neighbor who played a major role in oppressing its fellow Arabs in Palestine. The Egyptian-Gaza border will now be opened, according to an Al Jazeera report.
Egypt’s foreign minister said in an interview with Al-Jazeera on Thursday [April 28] that preparations were underway to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on a permanent basis.
A unified Fatah-Hamas Palestinian government is no guarantee that Israel will retreat behind the 1967 border, tear down that obscene wall, and give up its military control of the Palestinian people. Such a radical reversal of the current reality will take time. But one thing is certain: The Arab Spring has unleashed a demand for freedom and self-government that has been dormant for far too long.
This demand for freedom extends from Ramallah to Rafah, from Cairo to Jerusalem. No AIPAC Policy Conference and no cheers for Bibi in the US Congress can hold back this demand for freedom.
Philip Weiss, who co-edits, along with Adam Horowitz, the indispensable Mondoweiss web site, sounded like a Protestant evangelist with this word on how slow his fellow Jewish journalists have been to grasp the reality of Israel’s role as an inspiration for the Arab Spring:
My theme today is denial, specifically as it involves the Arab revolutions: the failure of American media figures and Jewish leaders to recognize the huge spiritual-political effect of the Arab spring and the inevitability of that spirit coming to bear on the dire human-rights situation in Palestine.
As Issandr El Amrani said the other night at the 92d Street Y, this revolution has the promise of the French revolution, and to seek to diminish it or to caricature it (the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take over Jordan, Yossi Klein Halevi warned at the American Jewish Committee today) is a terrible mistake.
This denial is most profound inside American liberal Jewish life and in the failure of liberals to understand. Of course, Palestinians will also want their spring. And they must have it.
I will give you two instances of this denial. The first was Terry Gross interviewing Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker on Fresh Air the other day, all about the Arab revolutions and Egypt and Obama’s foreign policy. And you will see from the transcript that Israel was mentioned only once, and tangentially.
The conceit of this nearly-hour-long exchange was the idea, Well these Arab countries are finally going to try to be democratic, harrumph, and Obama must lend his hand.
With no awareness at all that (a), American support for Israel has militated against Arab democracy and the idea of Arab self-determination forever, and (b), that the thirst for democracy in the Middle East portends revolutionary change in one of the most repressive societies in the world, the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
If that is not preaching, then, gentle reader, you don’t know preaching.
Finally, Tariq Ali, editor of the New Left Review, and a frequent contributor to the London Guardian, traces the recent history that led up to the Arab Spring, the upheaval that inspired such evangelistic zeal from Weiss.
His language is poetic, uplifting and insightful:
The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world – the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states – was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism.
This was followed, after the second world war, by a complex process of imperial transition to the United States. The result was a radical anti colonial Arab nationalism and Zionist expansionism within the wider framework of the cold war.
When the cold war ended, Washington took charge of the region, initially through local potentates then through military bases and direct occupation. Democracy never entered the frame, enabling the Israelis to boast that they alone were an oasis of light in the heart of Arab darkness.
Darkness in this context, however, is a relative term. The Arab people who have walked in darkness in the colonial period, have begun to see the light. No amount of Israeli deception, nor of US congressional blindness, will change the fact that the Arab Spring has revealed a future to the Arab people in which bondage is no longer tolerated.
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10. Haaretz Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Latest update 18:39 04.05.11
Hamas says prepared to give peace with Israel ‘another chance’
At reconciliation ceremony with Fatah, Hamas leader Meshaal says Israel does not seem ready for peace, urges world to ‘stand with us’.
By Reuters
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Wednesday challenged Israel to peace, offering to work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt on a new strategy to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But Meshaal, addressing a meeting in Cairo to announce a reconciliation agreement between his Islamist group and its secular Fatah rival, said he did not believe Israel was ready for peace with any Palestinians.
“We have given peace since Madrid till now 20 years, and I say we are ready to agree among us Palestinians and with Arab support to give an additional chance,” Meshaal said, referring to the 1991 international Middle East peace conference that launched Israeli-Arab peace talks.
“But, dear brothers, because Israel does not respect us, and because Israel has rejected all our initiatives and because Israel deliberately rejects Palestinian rights, rejects Fatah members as well as Hamas…it wants the land, security and claims to want peace,” he said.
Israel regards Hamas, whose founding charter calls for its destruction of the Jewish state, as a terrorist organization. Hamas has opposed Abbas’ peace efforts with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the new unity pact between Hamas and Fatah as a “mortal blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.
Meshaal said that Egypt, the Arab League and the Muslim World’s largest body, the Islamic Organisation Conference, must work together to search for a new strategy.
“We don’t want to declare war on any one,” Meshaal said.
“We want to wrench our rights and draft a new strategy for ourselves, to master all forms of power that will force Netanyahu to withdraw from our lands and to recognize our rights,” he added.
“We are telling the world: stand with us.”
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